Fire in Bel-Air frays nerves as red flag weather is set to peak Thursday in Los Angeles
- Share via
• Red flag fire weather warnings will persist through Friday.
• Gusts could hit 65 mph in the mountains.
A fire ignited late Wednesday in Bel-Air on the eastern side of the 405 Freeway in the Sepulveda Pass and burned into the early morning hours Thursday.
The fire, across the freeway and a mile north from the Getty Center, moved uphill amid wind gusts in the area that at one point reached 25 mph, according to Todd Hall, meteorologist with the National Weather Service. Contributing to the fire conditions was extremely dry air; relative humidity was 3% to 8%.
Multiple fire engines were at the scene. Firefighting helicopters overnight dropped water and filled up at the nearby Stone Canyon Reservoir.
News of the fire broke shortly after 11 p.m. Wednesday, and the blaze appeared to grow quickly. Around 1 a.m., TV footage appeared to show the fire slowing, its glow diminishing, amid relatively calm winds.
Shortly before 2 a.m., the Los Angeles Fire Department said the fire, which burned 40 acres, had stopped spreading. Officials lifted an evacuation warning for parts of Bel-Air, including homes along Casiano Road and Chalon Road, as well as Moraga Drive, which is lined by multimillion-dollar homes. Authorities earlier lifted an evacuation warning for a part of Brentwood including the Chalon campus of Mount Saint Mary’s University.
This article is provided free of charge to help keep our community safe and supported during these devastating fires.
“There are no structures damaged and no injuries reported. Firefighters will remain on scene through the night conducting mop-up operations to ensure no hot spots remain,” the LAFD said. Traffic on the 405 will likely be slowed “as crews and apparatus work alongside the freeway.”
Moraga Bel Air Vineyards, owned by Rupert Murdoch, was among properties that received an evacuation warning during the fire. Murdoch, 93, reportedly paid $30 million for the 16-acre site in 2013.
Murdoch is known to spend time at the estate, parts of which were scorched during the Skirball fire in 2017. He married his fifth wife, Elena Zhukova, a former Russian molecular biologist, at Moraga last June.
The Getty Center art museum “activated fire protection measures” due to the threat from the blaze, said Alexandria Sivak, a spokesperson for the J. Paul Getty Trust, in an email early Thursday.
Early in the firefight, the Hotel Angeleno was evacuating 121 people due to the fire, according to a front desk worker. The hotel was less than two miles from the site of the fire, on the other side of the 405.
Some UCLA students expressed anxiety on social media at news of the fire, although the university was not in an evacuation area.
“I don’t even know how I’m supposed to sleep ... I HAVE A QUIZ TOMORROW,” one Reddit user said.
The Sepulveda fire was the latest blaze in a nerve-racking week as Southern California headed into a fourth consecutive day of red flag fire weather warnings. The alerts caution that conditions are ripe for fires to ignite and spread rapidly. There have been red flag warnings in some part of Southern California for 14 of the last 17 days. The stretch started Jan. 7, the day the Palisades and Eaton fires began their devastating spread, leveling swaths of Pacific Palisades and Altadena.
Thursday will continue to be a day of critical fire weather danger.
“Any new fires can grow fast and out of control,” the National Weather Service posted on social media. “Have a plan, especially if you are in a high fire risk area.”
Santa Ana winds will strengthen and peak during the day Thursday, weather service meteorologist Ryan Kittell said. The weather service has extended its red flag fire weather warning through Friday at 10 a.m. for much of the counties of Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura.
“We’re still in the middle of this extended period of extreme dryness, and we’re looking at this next wind enhancement picking up,” Kittell said. Humidity has dipped below 10%.
Peak gusts Thursday were forecast to be a bit stronger than anticipated earlier in some locations. Gusts on Thursday could reach 45 mph in the western San Fernando Valley, Oxnard and the Grapevine section of Interstate 5; 53 mph in Ramona; 54 mph in Acton; 55 mph in Fillmore and Idyllwild; 59 mph in Santa Clarita; 62 mph in Thousand Oaks; 68 mph in Beaumont; and 69 mph in Alpine.
With the air so dry — and not moistening up overnight — it is a “really concerning period for humidities,” Kittell said. Plants and other fuels are “ready to burn.”
Rain is in the forecast for Southern California. Precipitation could start as early as Saturday afternoon and last until Monday night.
Rainfall could total nine-tenths of an inch for Covina; nearly three-quarters of an inch for downtown L.A., Long Beach and Santa Clarita; two-thirds of an inch for Redondo Beach; three-fifths of an inch in Fillmore and Canoga Park; and about half an inch in Thousand Oaks and Oxnard. Eleven inches of snow could fall on Wrightwood, and four inches along the Grapevine section of Interstate 5.
There is a 10% to 20% chance of thunderstorms across the region, which if they materialize over recently burned areas could bring moments of heavy rainfall, potentially resulting in debris flows and other landslide risks. It’s a low risk but something to consider, Kittell said.
The storm will most likely “bring us some beneficial rain” and mitigate the fires now burning, Kittell said. But, he added, “it won’t kill the fire weather season. ... It’s not gonna be enough to crush it.”
Firefighters were continuing to battle the Hughes fire in northern Los Angeles County on Thursday.
The fire started off of Lake Hughes Road just before 11 a.m. Wednesday and quickly prompted evacuation orders in and around Castaic Lake, which by afternoon extended toward Ventura County to the west and near Sandberg to the north. More than 31,000 people were ordered to evacuate, and warnings were issued to 23,000 others.
The fire exploded in size near Castaic Lake on Wednesday, and although Santa Ana winds quickly fanned the blaze to 10,000 acres, crews began to gain control by evening thanks to a massive deployment of ground and aerial resources.
The fire was 14% contained by 10 p.m. Wednesday. More than 4,000 firefighters and over a dozen water- and retardant-dropping aircraft were responding to the incident.
“We were able to put in tens of thousands of gallons of retardant on the south side of the fire because the fire was moving to the southwest,” said L.A. County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone at a news conference Wednesday. “It was really the aircraft, in addition to all of those ground resources, which allowed us to get the upper hand.”
Around 31,000 residents were under evacuation orders and 23,000 were under evacuation warnings. The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department sent its newly formed Looter Suppression Team to the area to protect evacuated homes.
The weather service said winds in the Hughes fire area were expected to increase again Thursday, peaking in the morning and afternoon hours.
Marrone noted that the Hughes fire erupted under very different conditions than previous blazes.
Although winds were strong on Wednesday, “they were not those 70-, 80-, 90-mph winds that we experienced” on Jan. 7, when the Palisades and Eaton fires ignited.
As firefighters continue to battle multiple major wildfires, The Times has compiled a list of resources to help.
In addition, there are now a far larger number of firefighting resources staged in the region.
“We have so many resources from Northern California, from the Western United States, international resources,” he said. “The number of helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft that are available to us really allow us to attack a fire like this.”
Times staff writer Amy Kaufman contributed to this report.
Sign up for Essential California
The most important California stories and recommendations in your inbox every morning.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
